


Remembrances

by thesometimeswarrior



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Community: daysofawesome, Episode: s02e20 Weirdmageddon 3: Take Back the Falls, Family Feels, Gen, Introspection, Jewish Pines Family, Jewish Wendy Corduroy, Judaism, Memory, Not quite an AU, Post-Weirdmageddon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:55:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26639932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesometimeswarrior/pseuds/thesometimeswarrior
Summary: Several hours into his and Mabel’s birthday party, Wendy exclaims: “Hey! If you guys are thirteen now—and there’stwoStan Pineses—we might have enough for aminyanfor the first time in like…areallylong time!"On his last day in Gravity Falls, Dipper contemplates memory, and the rituals that enable it.
Relationships: Dipper Pines & Ford Pines & Mabel Pines & Stan Pines, Wendy Corduroy & Dipper Pines, Wendy Corduroy & Mabel Pines
Comments: 12
Kudos: 47
Collections: DaysOfAwesome 2020 (5781)





	Remembrances

**Author's Note:**

> Shanah Tovah--happy New Year!
> 
> This piece was inspired by several things, and one of them was the _Zichronot_ section of the Rosh HaShana liturgy--hence the name, "Remembrances."
> 
> \--
>
>> _A Jewish man remembers the sukkah in his grandfather’s home.  
>  And the sukkah remembers for him  
> The wandering in the desert that remembers  
> The grace of youth and the Tablets of the Ten Commandments  
> And the gold of the Golden Calf and the thirst and the hunger  
> That remembers Egypt._
>> 
>> —Yehuda Amichai, "The Jews"

They’re not planning on having a Bnai Mitzvah ceremony, and neither of them have ever really wanted one. “We’re Jew- _ish_ ,” Mable explains gleefully, whenever it comes up. And, in the rare moment that Dipper thinks about it, he’s inclined to agree with his mom: that whatever rituals they follow or don’t, whatever holidays they celebrate or don’t, whatever songs they sing, or prayers they don’t know the words to, or God they don’t believe in, their Jewishness is theirs if they want it. It’s already always inside them, a gift brought from wherever-they-came-from to Glass Shard Beach, New Jersey, then carried across the country to Piedmont by Grandpa Shermie. And even if they’re all atheists—and they are, Dipper thinks, even Mabel who believed in unicorns before this summer, and even him, who believed in zombies before they crashed the Grand Reopening party—even so, that gift is theirs, a present embedded in their brains, if not in their souls.

He doesn’t think about it all that much, though.

But when, several hours into his and Mabel’s birthday party, Wendy exclaims: “Hey! If you guys are thirteen now—and there’s _two_ Stan Pineses—we might have enough for a _minyan_ for the first time in like…a _really_ long time!,” Dipper raises an eyebrow.

But she’s excited, and it’s the last day they’ll be together, so he helps her gather the relevant individuals anyway. A few moments later, there’s ten of them congregated in a quiet corner next to the Shack. 

“This really necessary?” Grunkle Stan asks.

Wendy arches an eyebrow. “Like the only things you’ve ever done were things you _had_ to do, Mr. Pines.”

“Hey, a lot of the whimsical crap I did in the Shack _was_ stuff I had to do, so that I could keep it long enough for me to get my brother back!”

“Right,” replies Wendy, in a mock epiphany. “I’m sure your brother would’ve never found his way home without your periodic day-long _Ducktective_ marathons!”

Grunkle Ford snorts. “Certainly, I wouldn’t have! How else could I have been sure this really was my home dimension?”

Stan ogles at him for a moment, but then Ford grins, gently ribs his twin with his elbow, and Stan returns the smile. He slings an arm around his long-lost-but-recently-found brother, and then Mabel appears at his other side, so he rests his free hand on the top of her head. 

These are the moments, Dipper thinks, that he wants to hold onto when they leave, in mere hours now. Them all together like this, _here_. They’ll all stay in each other’s lives, of course, he knows that. They’re _family_ — _more_ than that after everything that’s happened these past few months. And not just him and Mabel and Stan and Ford, but Wendy too, and her family, also standing in this little gaggle, and Lazy Susan, and Tad Strange…And the other people at the party, even those whom they hadn’t gathered for a _minyan_ —Soos, and the Northwests, and Robbie, and McGucket, and Gideon, and Toby, and all the rest of them. And Gravity Falls itself will still be here, and maybe—he _hopes_ —he and Mabel and their Grunkles will all come back. But it’ll never be this summer again, and they’ll never be the exact same people, all together in the exact same way they are right now. And he wants to hold onto that. 

“So,” Wendy says. “Should we get started before the sun sets?”

They do. It’s a little awkward at first. No one except Wendy seems to know the words well, and they don’t have prayer-books handy, so those of them with cellphones scramble to pull up what they can from the internet. The rest of them peer over their shoulders, or else mumble along to the sections that require responses. 

“ _Tehilat Adonai Yedaber Pi_ ,” Wendy’s voice rings out, and they all murmur along with her.

Dipper steals a glance at Ford, squinting at the tiny screen of Stan’s flip phone. It’s funny, now, to think how only a few weeks ago, he didn’t even know Ford existed—even if he _had_ been speculating and fantasizing about the Author all summer. He couldn’t have imagined when he first found the journal, though, that he’d actually be _related_ to the Author, much less how much the man would come to mean to him in such a short length of time. 

And beyond narrowly avoiding the apocalypse, Dipper has spent so much of these past weeks searching for things that he and Ford shared—and, in many cases finding them. And even if he has a slightly less rose-tinted picture of the man his great uncle is after everything with the apprenticeship and what it did to Mabel—plus the argument he witnessed Ford instigate with Stan at that critical moment when the world was ending, what _that_ almost led to, with them, and then with Stan… Even with all of that, he is proud of the commonalities he’s found. 

And, it dawns on him suddenly, perhaps this is another one. Another thing they share. Two atheists with this same gift handed down to them, theirs for the taking. It’s an exhilarating prospect—and Dipper feels it as such, as a little lurch in his chest, a grin that pulls at his lips. He’s barely scratched the surface of getting to know Ford, and now they’re leaving, and yes, they’ll keep in touch, and yes, they’ll see each other again, but knowing this, that, in addition to everything else they share, they have this in common too, means that he won’t have to wait until next summer, or Thanksgiving, or whenever it might be that they all see each other again. They have things to keep them close: Scientific inquiry. A penchant for the bizarre. A love of D&D&D and of their families. And now this gift of mumbled, half-forgotten words and everything that they stand for. 

Then Dipper knows, instinctually, that if he ever does this in the future, gathers with nine other people to say these prayers, these words in a language he doesn’t understand but still somehow feels like he _knows_ —whether next week, or next month, or fifty years from now when he’s as old as his Grunkles, he’ll think, if only for an instant, of Ford standing next to him now and squinting at that tiny screen. The same way he knows that any time he plays D&D&D, he’ll always think not only of playing it in basement with Ford, but of the glint in Stan’s eyes as _he_ rolled the die, and of Mabel casting _Death Muffin_ shortly thereafter—the excited little lurch he’d felt in that moment at the prospect that the four of them might feel like a family after all. Or the way he is certain that any time he hears “Taking over Midnight” now, for a moment, he will be on the roof of the Shack, belting out a three-part harmony with Stan and his sister, understanding for the first time that perhaps he really could trust Stan after all. So too, if he ever does this again, gathers and then murmurs these half-understood words, but that he somehow nonetheless _knows_ , he will be _here_ , now, on the last day of this particular summer, behind the Shack, in these woods, surrounded by all the people he loves most in the world.

Maybe that’s the _gift_ of all this: While it’s true that he may not be able to remember exactly who is he and how he feels at this instant, or at every moment of his life—while they all may not remember exactly where they came from before Gravity Falls or Piedmont or Glass Shard Beach—maybe he, they don’t have to in order to hold on to these things. Maybe the traditions remember _for_ them. And if that’s true, then this, this thing given to him by Grandpa Shermie, and then his parents, really is a _gift_. 

Dipper grins.

They move on to what Wendy claims is the final part of the service—an opportunity, she says, to grieve together, to mourn. The tone of their little crowd shifts visibly. Nobody seems to talk about the unpleasantness of several days ago, but—save for Stan, who recalls something of the near-apocalypse, but for whom it evidentially all remains a bit hazy—they all remember. And even if they hadn’t actually lost anyone—no one other than Bill had actually died—they are nonetheless grieving the ghosts of the people they _might_ have lost. All of those forms locked in that metallic throne. Ford’s mouth open and arm outstretched in golden agony. The vacant look in Stan’s eyes in those moments right _after_. 

And these potentialities—and the great grief they represent—are not the only things they’re mourning. Dipper flits his eyes up to Mabel cuddled under Grunkle Stan’s arm. It’s a _good_ thing that they’re going to grow up, and that they’re going to do it together, of course it is, and it’s certainly better than any of the alternatives, but there’s something lost, too. Mabel had felt it weeks ago—had been digging her heels into the ground like Waddles does when she threatens to bathe him—against it, but the truth is Dipper feels it too. Part of who he is in this moment is the sadness he feels at its passing, and that’s something he needs to hold onto to—part of what these words will remember for him. 

Dipper just has to utter them. And he paces over to Mabel, and grips her hand as he does so. “ _Yitgadal v’yitgadash shemei rabah_ …”

They’re not alone, him and Mabel, in their sadness or in anything else, because they have each other and they always will. But they have lots of other people too. And perhaps that’s part of the idea—anytime they access who they are in this moment, here—with all of its joy and melancholy—they’ll have people around them too—at least nine others. They won’t be alone. 

And then they’ll be reminded, if they ever forget, that they’ve always had people around them, holding them up. And whoever they’ve been, at any moment of their lives, that’s helped make them who they are.

The _mincha_ service ends. Mabel lays her head on Dipper’s shoulder, and Stan wraps his arm around both of them. Ford smiles. 

After a moment, and another hug, Stan turns back to the Shack to refill the coolers with Pitt Colas, and Ford follows at his heels. Wendy paces over to Dipper and Mabel. “So. What’d you think?”

Dipper considers. “It was…nice.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Look,” She turns to each of them, but lets her eyes settle on Mabel. “There’s a lot that’s not great about growing up. Teen horror story, and all that. But I wanted to show you there are some cool things too.” She pauses, then kneels. Lays a hand on each of their shoulders. “You guys have been a part of this community since you got here in June, you know that. But the older you get the more _ways_ you can be a part of it, ya know?”

Mabel’s hand is warm in Dipper’s. In a few hours, their Grunkles will tuck them into their beds in the attic for the last time—at least for this summer. Stan will wrap his arms around both of them in one of his larger-than-life embraces. Ford, still hesitant, will linger in the doorway, but will eventually approach to lay a six-fingered hand on each of their heads, and ruffle their hair—and there will be warmth in this gesture too, as much as in Stan’s hugs, and it will linger. It will always linger, this warmth.

They will always find ways to hold it. With this ritual, or any of countless others. Jewish or not.

Dipper and Mabel will never be the same people they are right in this moment again. But they can always access these versions of themselves, and the more they grow—the more memories they make, the closer they hold onto each other as they grow older—the more space they’ll make for themselves and everyone else, everyone they love, to hold all of those memories, all of their summery warmth.

It’s a _gift_. 

“Yeah,” Dipper says, at last. “I think I _do._ ”

**Author's Note:**

> A brief vocab note: 
> 
> A "minyan" is a group of ten Jewish adults, and there are certain prayers that are traditionally only said with a minyan present.
> 
> \--
> 
> I hope you enjoyed! I love comments


End file.
